Look Ma, No Hands

Who is in the driver’s seat of your life? Recently I drove my nephew and three of his teenage friends from Louisville, KY to Cincinnati, OH to visit the Halloween-decorated amusement park, Kings Island. My nephew drove my father’s old Toyota. It’s a stick shift. So, I didn’t need an amusement park by the time we completed our travels. I had enough heart-stopping moments on the trip. In the end, my nephew proved to be a good driver like most of us. Our driving depends on our ability to respond powerfully. Even the new Tesla Model S with Autopilot is proving to need human intelligence to stay safe on the road. “It’s in Beta,” cries the company. Still, the Tesla testers are thankful they can over-ride the auto system.

Are you on auto-pilot or are you driving your next actions? Let’s see who’s on auto-pilot or driving in the news today?

Years ago in a personal development seminar, I pondered the words respond and react. To be responsible for your life, aren’t you simply employing the ability to respond? Response-ability? Doesn’t that make good drivers on the highway and in life?

Who is in charge of your driving today? Like I told my nephew, the art of driving comes from knowing at any minute the driver next to you can switch lanes in front of you. The art of safe driving comes from being on the defensive, knowing that at any minute you can swerve to save yourself from a wreck. That is why it’s important to always drive sober and alert. (Yes, I was the aunt who was preaching safe and sober driving.) Well, I’m advising this for your life, not only your driving. Get in the drivers seat about what you say and how you listen to people. Two of us can hear the same sentence and interpret it differently. Are you going to have the ability to respond to your life? Be response-able? Responsible.

Get out there and drive yourself. Drive yourself to success and at any time, know you can swerve to a higher path for the best and good for all. Think twice before you declare, “Look Ma, no hands.” Autopilot rarely gets us what we want.

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Good Morning America Producer Mable Chan calls Michelle Tennant a “Five Star Publicist.” Tennant, a partner and executive publicist with Wasabi Publicity Inc., calls herself a “storyteller to the media.” Her passion is telling “truly good stories” and “exclusively representing people who make a positive difference in the world.” For 25+ years, media friends have solicited her help in crafting news stories by requesting sources, sound bites, and statistics. An award-winning writer, Michelle peppers campaigns with insight from her master’s degree in human development, BFA from a top 25 drama school, and expertise seeing PR transition from typewriters to Twitter. She’s either spinning stories or spinning at the gym. After hours, she savors the Smoky Mountains with her husband, Siberian Husky, and backyard chickens. Learn more about her work through her column at The Huffington Post.
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